ABSTRACT
This chapter describes in some detail Frege’s handling of the propositional attitudes. Expressions appearing in propositional attitude contexts do not refer to their customary referents, but to their customary senses: ‘Venus’ in ‘Venus is a planet’ refers to the planet Venus, but in ‘Bob believes that Venus is a planet’, ‘Venus’ refers to the sense of the term ‘Venus’, not to Venus. Various implications of this are identified. Quine explores further aspects of this, including the matter of ‘quantifying in’ – if effect, of the ‘exportation’ step: from ‘Bob believes that Venus is a planet’ to ‘Of Venus, Bob believes that it is a planet’. Kaplan proposed a lucid formalisation of the idea, requiring that the term subjected to exportation be a vivid designator; however this broadly Fregean picture comes under severe strain from considerations involving indexicals and demonstratives. Salmon’s ingenuous way of solving the problem from the point of view of direct reference theory is explored.
